INDIA bloc's ‘vote chori’ march to Election Commission today, cops say ‘no permission granted’

OVer 300 MPs from 25 oppositeness parties testament process from the Parliament to the Election charge of bharat (ECI) headquarters in the national capital on Monday to protest alleged “vote chori” (vote theft) in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.Several parties– including Congress, Samajwadi Party, TMC, DMK, AAP, Left parties, RJD, NCP(SP), Shiv Sena (UBT) and National Conference – are expected to join the rally, scheduled to start at 11.30 am from the Parliament's Makar Dwar.However, Delhi Police is unlikely to permit the march to reach the EC office, less than 2 km away. A senior officer, speaking on condition of anonymity told Hindustan Times that no formal request for police permission has been submitted.According to a Congress communique, “MPs of Opposition parties (LS & RS) to march from Makar Dwar in Parliament to Nirvachan Sadan (Election Commission), New Delhi via Transport Bhawan at 11.30 AM, tomorrow, August 11, 2025.”No INDIA bloc banner; march to feature multi-language postersThe protest, called by the INDIA bloc, will be held without the alliance’s banner to accommodate AAP, which exited the alliance last month but has 12 MPs in Parliament.“This is a programme of the Opposition and we expect AAP to join it,” Trinamool Congress MP Sagarika Ghose said. A senior Opposition leader said the TMC played a key role in persuading AAP to participate in the march from Parliament to the EC office on Ashoka Road.Protesters plan to carry posters and banners in English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi to oppose the Bihar SIR exercise and highlight alleged “vote theft.”On Sunday, the Congress launched a web portal for citizens to register their support and demand accountability from the EC, urging release of digital voter rolls.“Vote Chori is an attack on the foundational idea of ‘one man, one vote’. A clean voter roll is imperative for free and fair elections,” Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi posted on X. “Our demand from the EC is clear — be transparent and release digital voter rolls so that people and parties can audit them. The fight is to protect the democracy.”Rahul Gandhi’s voter fraud allegationLast week, Gandhi alleged that over 100,000 votes were “stolen” through five types of manipulation in Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka’s Bangalore Central constituency during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.“We started examining the details and discovered that approximately 1,00,250 votes were stolen in the Mahadevapura assembly,” he claimed while presenting the findings at a press conference.The Election Commission, in multiple social media posts, rejected Gandhi’s claims as “incorrect” and has asked him to submit the data of alleged dubious voters under oath.